When all you can do is pray

There are times, my God, when all I can do is pray.  In the numbness or exhaustion, in speechlessness or nothingness, in conflict that rises to You as a plea, I wonder what else I can do.

Nothing.  When nothing else works I can pray.  I can.  When I can do nothing else I can pray.  And these prayers, You know full well, Lord, are not prayers of words; they’re groans of my spirit reaching up to You from the barren silence within me.  A vacuum, which is utterly foreign to me, but is a void that is intelligible to You.  You know the heart when I have lost touch with it.  You know the mind when the mind is gone.  You know the soul when it is desolate.

When all I can do is pray, I cannot pray as the Pharisees do.  I do not have words — fancy big ones, religious ones, big-brained ones — not even bare syllables at times.

My blank stare is a prayer.

The lack of my call to You for Your care is a prayer.

My soul that is cavernously open and vulnerable; that — as it is — is my prayer.

When there is nothing in my mouth but air, stale and deathly, that there is my prayer.  And it is just as acceptable to You as the dearest words of Spurgeon or anyone else.

I can even say the silliest or darndest things, and You understand, and whether I mean them or not, You know it’s the heart that strives for meaning it cannot have. 

You don’t need words, when after all these years perhaps I’ve felt guilty at times when I’ve not had them.  But You, my God and Saviour, need no such thing as thought or words or other instruments of ‘me’ for You to intercede from the heavens for me.

Words do not impress You, God, nor high thoughts or proud utterances.  You say that Your thoughts are higher than mine, and I take You at Your word.  So if words do not impress You, God, when I don’t have them, I offer You the poverty of my spirit, the song of my silence, the longing I have for you, Jesus, when there is nothing left.

This prayer is sufficient.

AMEN.

~

I’ve had people say to me, “I’m sorry, but all I can do for you is pray,” when realistically it’s the only action we can ever do that has divine power in it.